Snip Snip
by prepare4trouble
Summary: An unfortunate incident on a mission leads to an impromptu haircut for Kanan, and nobody's quite sure what to make of it.
1. Chapter 1

A/N - this is from a request on Tumblr, and was originally posted in a slightly different order, I have decided to post this part first even though it was requested second, as it makes chronological sense. The original prompt was: "I wish you would write a fic where something gets stuck in Kanan's hair while on a mission or something and the only way to get it out is to cut his hair and then the rest of the crew have mini mental breakdowns because Kanan's! Hair! Is! Different! Meanwhile Kanan is being his usual Kanan self about the whole thing." That pretty much covers the whole story, so I won't post the individual prompts in each chapter.

* * *

Ezra took a deep, gulping breath as he emerged from the Phantom. Sabine watched, not bothering to disguise her irritation, as he covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve, jogged quickly over to her, thrust the pair of scissors in her direction, and then backed away quickly.

"It's not that bad," she muttered half under her breath.

"Yeah, it is," Kanan told her.

He was right. Honestly, she was surprised Ezra hadn't floated them over using the Force to avoid coming too close. It was what she would have done, if she were him.

"Don't defend him," Sabine said. "If we have to smell it, why should they all get away with it?"

"Common sense?" Zeb suggested. He had taken a seat on the drop-down door to the Phantom, and looked like he was enjoying the show. Ezra sat down next to him, while Hera stood a little to the side, looking spectacularly unimpressed with the whole situation.

Sabine looked down at the scissors. They had been taken from the medical kit they kept aboard the Phantom, and their primary function was supposed to be cutting bandages, maybe cutting clothing if necessary. They were sharp enough, but not exactly the precision tools that were needed for this job.

Still, at least it wasn't a lightsaber. That had been Kanan's first suggestion, though he hadn't looked comfortable at the idea. Of course, if they had been forced to do that, at least she wouldn't have been the one stuck with the job.

She eyed the gunk with distaste. It was a translucent shade of pale green, with… things… suspended inside it. It had struck Kanan on the back of the head as they walked by, sticking instantly to his hair. To make matters worse, it had even stuck to the band he used to tie it back, and a little above it too. It had defied any and all attempts to remove it; luckily nobody had wanted to touch it with their fingers, but when Hera had tried to wipe it away, the leaf she had used had stuck there too, and still remained in place like some kind of all-natural hair accessory. Water had ran off the substance with no effect whatsoever. It was simply not going to move.

There was a chance it might have washed out with shampoo, but nobody had anticipated the need for an emergency hair-wash when they had packed for the mission. Anyway, given its resistance to everything, she didn't think it was likely. Anyway, there was no way Kanan was going to be allowed back aboard the Phantom, let alone the Ghost, without the stuff removed from his hair.

Unfortunately, the only way they were going to be able to do that, was cut it out, and that meant cutting the hair too.

Sabine raised the scissors slowly and her hand trembled slightly as she approached the hair, as though protesting at the action she was forcing it to perform. She couldn't take a deep breath as she normally would, to help steel herself; The smell was so bad that even without breathing through her nose at all, she was still fighting the urge to retch, the odor permeated the air all around them, and she could taste it on her tongue with every shallow inhalation.

She turned away, into the breeze. It made it only slightly more tolerable. This was going to go badly wrong. "Why do I have to be the one to do this?" She asked. It wasn't like there had been a discussion, or a vote, it had simply been assumed.

"You do have experience," Kanan reminded her. He spoke softly as he, too, tried not to breathe too deeply. Sabine felt for him, at least she and the others could move away to escape it, Kanan had no such option. He had been forced to walk back to the ship alone while the rest of the crew gave him a wide berth.

"Not really," Sabine told him. "I dye my own hair, but I don't usually cut it myself. I find someone who can do it for me." Even in the middle of a rebellion, you encountered people with unexpected skills. "You don't tell a hairdresser to set an explosive charge," she added, "so why would you ask me to cut hair?"

"Ezra asked you," Zeb reminded her, from his safe distance.

"Yeah, well that's Ezra. No offense Ezra. Anyway, his was easy."

"This'll be easy too," Kanan assured her. "All you're doing is cutting the stuff out, it doesn't have to look good, it just has to be clean, or Hera isn't going to allow me back into the Phantom."

"Yeah, it'll be easy," Zeb said, in a way that was either supposed to be encouraging or mocking, she couldn't work out which. Ezra nodded emphatically in agreement. He was holding his nose with one hand while fanning the other theatrically in front of his face.

Sabine glared. "If it's so easy, maybe you should do it."

Zeb shook his head, holding up both hands, palms outward. "Those tiny scissors weren't designed for my hands."

"Hera?" Sabine tried. It was a long-shot, but the last thing she wanted was for her to claim later that of course she would have done it, if someone had only asked her.

Hera was gone.

"She went into the ship," Ezra explained.

"Making preparations for take-off," added Zeb.

There weren't really any preparations to make. Hera was hiding, either from the smell, or from the possibility of being asked to help. Or, more likely, from having to watch Kanan be parted from his hair.

"Hera doesn't have hair," Ezra pointed out. "She's probably the last person you should ask. Well, except for Chopper maybe."

That just left Ezra. And that wasn't going to happen, for so many reasons.

Kanan turned to face her. He placed a hand on her arm. "It's fine, Sabine. I trust you."

"You might not, if you'd seen it," she muttered.

Kanan shrugged. "Well I haven't, and I'm not going to. But I can smell it, so seriously, do your worst." He paused, and grimaced. "But not actually your worst, if you can help it."

Sabine frowned. She wasn't going to be able to get out of it. "Okay, you asked for it," she said. She glanced over at Ezra and Zeb, who had been joined now by Chopper. "You all need to go inside," she told them. "I'm not doing this with an audience."

For a moment, she thought she was going to have an argument on her hands, but to her surprise, the three of them filed inside silently. They were probably as reluctant to see this happen as she was. She swallowed, and raised the scissors again. She placed one blade at either side of a small section of hair, and resisted the urge to close her eyes as she made the first cut.


	2. Chapter 2

"It… doesn't look so bad…"

Kanan frowned. His hair was hanging loose, freed from its usual ponytail. That alone felt strange. It moved with every tilt and turn of his head; he could feel the breeze shifting the individual strands in a way that he hadn't felt in years.

Experimentally, he reached up and touched his head, allowing his fingers to explore what remained of his hair. It covered his ears, and at the back it came down to just below his hairline. It felt a little uneven, hastily cut, the front was trying to hang down in bangs, but was a little too long to do so. He tilted his head backward and shook it, allowing the hair to fall into place at the sides of his face. Just because he couldn't see didn't mean he wanted hair in his eyes.

"It'll grow back," Sabine assured him. She sounded nervous, like she expected him to be angry, or upset.

Kanan smiled in her general direction, "I know. It's fine, Sabine. Thank you."

The lump of whatever-it-had-been still stank from down on the ground. Kanan attempted to kick a little dirt over it to disguise the stench, but it did little good. He took a few steps away from it, careful not to accidentally step into it. He'd already lost a perfectly good ponytail, he wasn't about to have to throw out his boots too.

He attempted to gather up what was left of his hair, just checking on how easy it would be to tie it back. The band he used had been contaminated, and lay on the ground with his hair. It didn't matter anyway, the remaining hair was just too short; it slipped from his fingers and fell back into place handing loose around his face and ears. Apparently, he was just going to have to get used to wearing it loose for a while.

"Sorry," Sabine told him. "I might've been able to get away with leaving it a bit longer, but I didn't want to get any of that stuff on my fingers. Most of it'll probably tie back in a couple of months."

The 'stuff' she was referring to had been the noxious smelling sticky substance that had been fired at him, according to Ezra, from the center of a plant as they walked past. It had stuck on contact, and resisted any and all attempts to get it out. In fact, anything that made contact with it had stuck too, resulting in a giant ball of stinking… something, on the back of his head.

"Honestly, Sabine, it's fine. I'd have happily let you shave it if you had to. I'm just grateful you were able to stand being close enough to me to cut it out. I have a feeling if I'd done it myself…" he tailed off, leaving the rest to her imagination.

"Yeah, good point. You're lucky I've got so much experience dealing with noxious chemicals. Some explosives are pretty stinky too, you know. Nothing like that, though. Honestly, if we could turn it into a weapon we defeat the Empire by this time next week." He heard a smile in her voice, then she sighed. "Ugh. I'm going to have to neaten that up when we get back to the Ghost. I just noticed, one side's longer than the other."

Kanan shrugged. "Doesn't bother me."

"Yeah, well you're not gonna have to look at it, are you? C'mon, lets get back."

She headed toward the Phantom. Kanan followed after her.

He was met by a collective gasp of surprise as he entered the ship, followed by a stream of binary laughter.

"Wow," Ezra said. "It's, uh… different."

From Sabine's direction, he felt a stab of anger through the Force. "I'm going to neaten it up when we get home," she said.

"Yeah, that's probably for the best," Ezra said. "But hey, at least you don't stink anymore." He sniffed the air deeply. "Much."

Zeb chuckled. "You kinda look like the kid," he said. "Well, a year or so ago, if he had a beard, and a different color hair, and…"

"Hey, I looked nothing like that!" Ezra said indignantly.

Kanan touched his hair again, feeling a little self-conscious.

"When do you think it'll grow back?" Ezra asked. "I mean, no offense, but you look kinda… I mean… Help me out here, Zeb."

"He looks fine," Hera supplied instead. She stepped a little closer, and ran her fingers through his new, shorter hair, combing it through to the ends, brushing it to one side, and then to the other, and then allowing her fingertips to briefly caress his scalp.

Kanan smiled. At least someone wasn't laughing at him, or apologizing for the cut.

"It will grow back though, won't it?" she asked, sounding oddly worried at the prospect that it might not.

Kanan frowned. Twi'leks didn't have hair, of course, but she had been around him long enough to know how it worked. It couldn't look so bad that she needed that reassurance, surely?

The first thing he was going to do when he got back to base was ask Rex for a slightly more objective opinion. He probably wasn't going to get one, but he could still ask. "Yes," he assured her through gritted teeth. "I promise it's going to grow back."

Next time they visited a world where he didn't know what to expect, he was going to wear a hood.


	3. Chapter 3

"Did you let Ezra play with scissors again?" Rex asked. He leaned heavily against the wall and made sure the grin was audible in his voice.

Kanan ran his fingers self-consciously through his strange new style and shrugged. "Something like that," he said.

Rex chuckled to himself. "Don't worry, it'll grow back," he said.

"Yeah, so everyone keeps telling me," Kanan replied. "How bad is it, really? All I get is laughter from Ezra and Zeb, Sabine's just assures me it'll grow back, and Hera tells me it looks fine." He ran his fingers through the hair again, then clenched his hand into a fist and pulled it down to his side as though deliberately forcing himself to stop touching it.

"What about that crazy droid of yours?" Rex asked.

Kanan grimaced. "Chopper's been alternating between laughing hysterically, and avoiding me completely. I can't get a straight answer out of anybody. I'm trying not to care, but it isn't easy when everyone keeps making such a big deal out of it."

Rex leaned in to get a better look. The hair appeared to have been hacked at random with either a knife, or something else not really designed for the job. It was longer in the front than the back, where it looked almost as though it had been cut around the top of the band he used — or had used to use — to tie it back. It would grow back, but it would be some time before it was long enough to be worn in the style Kanan was accustomed to.

Kanan touched his hair again; it was as though he couldn't leave it alone. Strange, that he had managed to develop a nervous habit practically overnight. Rex wondered whether it was in fact an older habit than that, something from before, a tell that he had figured out a way to suppress.

"Well?" Kanan asked. "Come on, Rex, you were honest with me before."

When everybody had been either dodging the question or replying with platitudes and false assurances, Rex had given a straight and honest answer to a question about Kanan's appearance once before, in the aftermath of the mess that had been Malachor. He had still been bitter over the loss of Ahsoka, and he hadn't pulled any punches, and Kanan had respected him for it, even if Rex had felt sorry afterward.

He took a deep breath and tried to choose his words carefully. "It's just hair," he said. "You've lost a lot worse than that. That's not to say it doesn't look bad — it does. It looks a bit like you hacked at it yourself with a blunt knife. Hey, that's not what you did, is it?"

Kanan smiled briefly as he shook his head.

"If I were you," Rex continued, "I'd find someone who knows their way around a pair of scissors and get them to neaten it up, at least. That, or get used to the sound of laughter wherever you go."

Kanan raised a hand to touch it again, but stopped it half-way to his head. He clasped both hands together, each one preventing the other from exploring the cut. "Thanks," he said, not sounding particularly thankful.

"So what did happen? I'm assuming it wasn't really Ezra, unless it's some new Force-training technique you've come up with." He chuckled. "Is that what happened to his hair too?"

"It was Sabine, actually," Kanan told him. "And believe it or not, this was the best option we had."

Rex nodded. "Oh, I believe it." There was no way Hera would have allowed it otherwise. "You know," he added, "there is another option, if you don't want to have to wait for it to grow back."

"What's that?" Kanan asked him. He was still holding his hands together to keep him from touching his hair.

Barely noticing what he was doing, Rex reached up and ran his own hand over the smooth surface of his head. "A good sharp razor and a handful of shaving foam," he said. "It'll fix that nervous habit of yours at the very least. And I always wanted to be a style icon."

Kanan laughed. "I'll bear that in mind as a last resort," he said.

Rex doubted it. There was no way Hera would allow that either.


	4. Chapter 4

Hera wrinkled her nose as the untidy mop of hair that sprawled across the pillow tickled her face. She backed away a little, pressing her back against the wall in an effort to escape, then, slowly, she reached over and touched it. Her fingers worked their way through the knotted strands, untangling them slowly.

"Ow," Kanan said. His voice was muffled by the pillow where he lay, practically face-down. He didn't make any effort to move, or to rescue his hair.

Hera pulled her hand away. "Sorry," she said.

"It's fine, you don't have to stop. Just go gentle, okay?"

When she didn't reach over to him again. Kanan turned over and angled his head in her direction as though he could look at her.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Hera smiled. "I was just thinking how strange it is that human hair doesn't have any nerve endings, but it can still hurt when I pull a knot."

Kanan shrugged. "Well, you're pulling on my scalp, it's not the hair that hurts."

"I know," Hera told him. She reached over again and touched his hair, not trying to detangle it now, simply feeling the smoothness of its texture. "It's still strange."

Kanan nodded, and smirked at her. "As long as you're still talking about hair in general and not just my hair again."

She looked at the strange mess of a haircut he still sported. He had, at Sabine's insistence, gotten the two sides cut to equal lengths, but that was all. From there, it had grown slightly longer, but still looked like something not entirely intentional had happened to it.

"Let's say both," Hera suggested.

"I can still get it cut again," Kanan told her. She could tell he wasn't serious from the smile he wore at the suggestion. "Maybe go for something like Ezra has. Or Rex."

Hera punched him lightly with a loose fist. "Not funny," she said.

"Are you sure? Rex seemed to think it was a good idea, and you know, long hair can be a liability in a fight, not to mention the disruption it causes when something gets stuck in it. It's been a month and we're still talking about that."

"You know, I'm your superior officer, I can order you not to cut it,"

She couldn't, of course. Or, she could, but it wouldn't make any difference, and nor should it. Luckily, she knew for a fact that Kanan was just messing with her.

Kanan tapped his forehead in mock-salute, still laying with his head on the pillow. "You're just saying that because you don't like the idea of cutting hair. Don't think I don't notice you sneaking off into the Phantom when this happened." He indicated his head with a vague wave of his saluting hand. "You didn't want to watch it, did you?"

It was true. No matter how long she spent around humans in general, and Kanan in particular, she would never be able to get her head around the fact that hair was not lekku; hair couldn't feel. She knew a human would be no more bothered by cutting hair than they would by cutting their fingernails, or a piece of clothing they were wearing, but still the idea still made her wince in sympathetic pain.

"I had something I needed to do," she said. "And I didn't think you'd appreciate an audience."

Kanan didn't reply. Slowly and reluctantly, he sat up in the bed, then reached for his hair, dragging his fingers through it a few times, far more roughly than Hera had, without any apparent pain from the knots and tangles. "It's getting longer," he said.

He was right. The sides came down almost to his jawline now, when he pulled it down with his fingers. He gathered it up, brushing it back with the palms of his hands, testing the length. A little of the hair at the sides escaped from his grip and returned to frame his face, the rest stayed comfortably clenched in a fist behind his head.

"Nearly there," he said.

Hera pushed the dropped strands back into place and looked at him critically. "You know," she said. "I think it's actually going to look pretty strange now, when you can do that again. I've gotten used to it hanging around your face like that." She let go, and the hair fell back again.

Kanan sighed in mock resignation. "Well, I guess I can leave it like this," he suggested. "If that's what you prefer."

Hera shook her head. "Definitely not," she said. "But when it's longer, if you decided to leave it loose sometimes, I wouldn't have a problem with that at all."

Kanan grinned. "Is that an order?" he asked. "You are my superior officer, after all."

She reached around his head and pulled his hand away, allowing the hair to fall back around his face. "Let's just call it a strongly worded suggestion," she told him.


End file.
